Yesterday marked the final night of the Donmar’s latest sell-out success, Piaf. Well, it was the last night until it reappears in 3 weeks time at the Vaudeville Theatre for another ‘limited’ 14 week run. I booked my tickets almost as soon as the booking period opened, so it’s been a long wait to actually see the show – but was it worth it?

The show’s first night was meant to happen last week, but then things don’t always happen as they’re originally intended. Just one week into rehearsals, director David Grindley left the show and was replaced by playwright/director Terry Johnson

So it actually turned out that last night’s performance was actually the final preview… apparently the show’s producers didn’t feel the need to reduce the price of my tickets. Fortunately, by the time I had watched last night’s show, I really didn’t care…

Yesterday Nicholas Hytner announced a number of shows that will be coming to the National Theatre in 2009… unsurprisingly, most of the newspapers have focused on the news that Helen Mirren will be performing in a new production of Phaedra, with headlines including:

I’m a huge fan of theatre critic and journalist Mark Shenton, and an avid reader of his daily blog on The Stage – frankly, any musical theatre fan out there who doesn’t read what he has to say is missing out.

Even if you read his regular blog, you’ll still unlikely to read everything he writes – he’s a prolific journalist, and contributes to a host of different publications, including broadway.com, theatreVoice and the Sunday Express.